Brian’s been back in touch – he’s been busy building a modular train layout for his club:
“Hi Alastair,
Having manned and run the timesaver layout at the recent model railroad and hobbies fair held in Knysna – my home town, it came to light that the public wanted to see trains running, not backwards and forwards as in shunting to industries.
I made a decision to build a small portable oval type layout in HOn3 for exhibiting at future events. This one will be super detailed as I usually do with my own personal layouts.
It must be small enough to fit in a vehicle therefore the layout will be 5 foot by 2 foot 6 inches and very well detailed with a lot of scratch built buildings on it.
I obtained ISO board of that size and surrounded it with Masonite (MDF) facias.
Below is a tryout of the minimum radius on the ISO board before adding the facia.
It was then painted with a sand textured earth colour paint and got it ready to mark out the very basic track plan.
I figured that the largest radius curve that I could get on said board was 13 and a half inches.
I used a piece of track curved to that radius – almost a half circle and proceeded to test an HOn3 Heisler and an HOn3 C – 16 2-8-0 on it. Both ran perfectly.
Below is the C-16 2-8-0 locomotive.
Next was a track plan to fit and what to put on this layout.
Two main structures that would fit is a scratch built single stall engine house that could handle both locomotives and a scratch built scrapyard.
The first engine house that I scratch built was too long for this small layout, so I promptly sold it to a friend and scratch built a new shorter one. The original one shown below with a corrugated iron sheet roof.
Below, the new shorter one showing the HOn3 Heisler inside and was built in a day and a half. All the interior and exterior details came from my ‘bits’ box – some already painted and some needed painting. This shorter length suited the layout a lot better.
Building a modular train layout:
Moved away from a corrugated iron roof to a tarpaper one. (Ran out of scale corrugated iron). The tarpaper is a sheet of A4 white paper sprayed randomly with a black acrylic paint so as not to cover it in a solid coat of paint.
It was then cut into strips and randomly glued onto the roof to avoid the same colour throughout. I Added a few repair patches here and there and then weathered it a bit more. Again all the details mainly the interior ones were added while still on my workbench. As seen above, the roof was made removable.
Below is the scratch built vehicle scrapyard. They are all resin cast from my moulds and glued together before painting and weathering. Next was the ground cover inside.
Below is the finished scrapyard ready for installation on the layout.
On one of the corners I placed another general scrapyard. It filled up the wasted corner space with a plausible industry. Note – not yet complete.
The layout had to have a bridge somewhere, so a small lake was placed on the opposite side for the bridge to cross over the inlet to the lake. (The white piece of paper)
As there was a lake to be put into the layout, people had to be able to hire or bring their boats and yachts to go cruising on the ‘lake’. A Scratch built boat hire shop shown below. Again a tarpaper roof was added as described above. The worker is fixing a leak on the peak of the roof.
The outboard motors are 3D printed in resin by a friend as well as the sawhorses.
A small town was next with different shops and related businesses. Also added a scratch built tractor repair shop.
On the other side of the layout there had to be an industrial area, so what better place to have it was opposite the vehicle scrapyard just out of picture on left side. A welding workshop is shown in the background. (A woodland Scenics welding shop kit).
Below is a bulldozer maintenance/repair shop (also scratch built) the dozers will be used in the logging area on the layout.
The next part was to cut out the lake area. ISO board (a nice solid type of foam) was cut out to the shape required. The base is 30mm below the surface making it 8 and a half HO scale feet deep. The backdrop does not belong to this layout as it is from my old home layout and is just resting against the back wall.
The base of the lake was glued into place and sealed completely to avoid water (resin) to leak through as seen below.
Below is an overhead view to make sure that everything is where it was designed to be including a graveyard (still to be assembled ) in bottom left corner just outside of the (town) also a woodland Scenics kit. No wasted space here. Top right corner will have a moonshine still hidden among some trees and bushes.
Top left will have a small sawmill where the water tank is.
All the corners have been put to good use and no wasted space here on this small layout.
The layouts main theme is logging hence the Heisler and possibly a Shay a bit later.
This is far as I am with this project and now to start laying the track.
No doubt that there will be a few minor changes and additions as I progress.
I used Ai (artificial intelligence) to give me an idea on how to scenic the layout and it came up with some excellent ones and I decided the best to follow would be the two shown below. First one was an Ai sketch.
Second one with the scenery below.
Another one showing the yachts sailing on the lake. I have both yacht models to use.
Part 2 will follow soon and as always Alastair, please keep up the excellent work you do for this site.
That’s all for now and till next time – keep modelling.
Brian – the HOn3 guy in Knysna RSA.”
A really big thanks to Brian for sharing how he is building a modular train layout.
Really looking forward to seeing the finished article.
That’s all for this time folks.
Please do keep ’em coming.
And if today is the day you get started on your layout, the Beginner’s Guide is here.
Best
Al
PS More HO scale train layouts here if that’s your thing.
Need buildings for your layout? Have a look at the store.
They are great fun to make and great value too.
